Among the manifold interests which now opened up before me, the cause of woman suffrage was for a time predominant. The novelty of the topic in the mind of the general public brought together large audiences in Boston and in the neighboring towns. Lucy Stone's fervent zeal, always guided by her faultless feeling of propriety, the earnest pleading of her husband, the brilliant eloquence and personal magnetism of Mary A. Livermore,—all these things combined to give to our platform a novel and sustained attraction. Noble men, aye, the noblest, stood with us in our endeavor,— some, like Senator Hoar and George S. Hale, to explain and illustrate the logical sequence which should lead to the recognition of our citizenship; others, like Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, and Henry Ward Beecher, able to overwhelm the crumbling defenses of the old order with the storm and flash of their eloquence.
We acted, one and all, under the powerful stimulus of hope. The object which we labored to accomplish was so legitimate and rational, so directly in the line of our religious belief, of our political institutions, that it appeared as if we had only to unfold our new banner, bright with the
